President Obama spoke on race again on Friday July 19th in impromptu remarks from the Brady briefing room. Obama said that before becoming a senator, he himself experienced walking across the street and hearing the locks click on doors, among other similar situations. It’s that set of experiences, he said, that informs how many black Americans interpret what happened in Sanford, Fla.
The President’s comment was particularly revealing , even as it was sincere. That the most powerful man on Planet Earth, the leader of the free world was not unscathed or un-scarred by America’s intrinsic racism is telling. It brings into focus just how at risk black men are in America.
What the President forgot is the racism did not stop when he became a Senator.
1) It was Racism which made them demand his birth certificate. Despite his accomplishments at Occidental College to Columbia University, and onto Harvard Law school, where he went on to becoming the President of the Prestigious Harvard Law Review. First black elected to that position, the highest student position at Harvard Law School. The ignoramuses who kept the nonsensical birther issue alive are nothing but present day show me your paper vigilantes. Interestingly when they are all lined up their combined IQ amounts to that of a jackass.
2) It was race which made imbecile congress-man Joe Wilson of South Carolina infamously shout, ‘You lie” as the the president delivered the State of the Union address. A crass ‚uncouth act of disrespect, never before seen in that body when a sitting president visits to deliver the state of the union address.
The instances of disrespect and racism hurled at this president should have been a wake up call to all men of color, yet as I pointed out in the first article in this series, we have fallen down on the job. There is an argument being made on this issue of race, the central tenet of that discussion is that whites are afraid of black people. Well I wonder why? Now if whites are afraid of blacks it bears examining why they feel compelled to project their fears onto the subject of their insecurities. Are these rational fears Genised in 4 hundred years of genocide visited on black people in the western world? Or are these fears based on new and perceived emerging threats from black men like our president?
Literally every day Police in these United States confront black men with raw aggression, aggression born out of fear they assault and kill them and they are not held to account. Secret grand juries exonerate cops , no trail, business as usual. A San Francisco Bay Area (BART) cop pulls his gun and simply shoots and kill a hand-cuffed young African-America male sitting on the ground, posing no threat to the cowardly murderers in uniform. The cop’s story ? I thought I was pulling my taser. Even if that creep was to be believed , tasing a handcuffed person posing no threat or risk is undue, excessive force, he took that young man’s life.
On November 5, 2010, the cop Johannes Mehserle was sentenced to two years, minus time served. He served his time in the Los Angeles County Jail, occupying a private cell away from other prisoners. That is the price of a black man’s life. He was released on June 13, 2011 and is now on parole.[1Oscar Grant was murdered by a jack-booted thug in uniform.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo0d6Q4RVno.
Trayvon Martin was just one of thousands of young men who are being killed in this country, black men are killing each other at alarming rates, but the police remains one of the greatest threat to the lives of black men. Not just young black men, men of all ages are at risk . One may view hours upon hours of police abuse on YouTube. They are generally never held accountable, the subject of their rage is almost always black men. That is hate.